cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related

Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Growth — from accenture.com

Excerpt:

Fuel For Growth
Compelling data reveal a discouraging truth about growth today. There has been a marked decline in the ability of traditional levers of production—capital investment and labor—to propel economic growth.

Yet, the numbers tell only part of the story. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a new factor of production and has the potential to introduce new sources of growth, changing how work is done and reinforcing the role of people to drive growth in business.

Accenture research on the impact of AI in 12 developed economies reveals that AI could double annual economic growth rates in 2035 by changing the nature of work and creating a new relationship between man and machine. The impact of AI technologies on business is projected to increase labor productivity by up to 40 percent and enable people to make more efficient use of their time.

Also see:

Artificial Intelligence Poised to Double Annual Economic Growth Rate in 12 Developed Economies and Boost Labor Productivity by up to 40 Percent by 2035, According to New Research by Accenture
Research released today from Accenture (NYSE: ACN) reveals that artificial intelligence (AI) could double annual economic growth rates by 2035 by changing the nature of work and spawning a new relationship between man and machine.

A “heads up!” on the Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference! I’ll be moderating a panel on AR, VR, & MR.

On 09/29/2016, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), blended learning, Blockchain, bots, Bring your own device (BYOD), change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communications, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, machine-to-machine communications, Mixed Reality (MR), mobile learning, Near Field Communication (NFC), pace of change, pedagogy, platforms, student-related, teaching & learning, technology (general), trends, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, wearables, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I have attended the Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference for the past two years. Both conferences were very solid and they made a significant impact on our campus, as they provided the knowledge, research, data, ideas, contacts, and the catalyst for us to move forward with building a Sandbox Classroom on campus. This new, collaborative space allows us to experiment with different pedagogies as well as technologies. As such, we’ve been able to experiment much more with active learning-based methods of teaching and learning. We’re still in Phase I of this new space, and we’re learning new things all of the time.

For the upcoming conference in February, I will be moderating a New Directions in Learning panel on the use of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR). Time permitting, I hope that we can also address other promising, emerging technologies that are heading our way such as chatbots, personal assistants, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, tvOS, blockchain and more.

The goal of this quickly-moving, engaging session will be to provide a smorgasbord of ideas to generate creative, innovative, and big thinking. We need to think about how these topics, trends, and technologies relate to what our next generation learning environments might look like in the near future — and put these things on our radars if they aren’t already there.

Key takeaways for the panel discussion:

Reflections regarding the affordances that new developments in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) — such as AR, VR, and MR — might offer for our learning and our learning spaces (or is our concept of what constitutes a learning space about to significantly expand?)
An update on the state of the approaching ed tech landscape
Creative, new thinking: What might our next generation learning environments look like in 5-10 years?

I’m looking forward to catching up with friends, meeting new people, and to the solid learning that I know will happen at this conference. I encourage you to check out the conference and register soon to take advantage of the early bird discounts.

From chatbots to Einstein, artificial intelligence as a service — from infoworld.com by Yves de Montcheuil

Excerpt:

The recent announcement of Salesforce Einstein — dubbed “artificial intelligence for everyone” — sheds new light on the new and pervasive usage of artificial intelligence in every aspect of businesses.

Powered by advanced machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and smart data discovery, Einstein’s models will be automatically customized for every single customer, and it will learn, self-tune, and get smarter with every interaction and additional piece of data. Most importantly, Einstein’s intelligence will be embedded within the context of business, automatically discovering relevant insights, predicting future behavior, proactively recommending best next actions and even automating tasks.

…
Chatbots, or conversational bots, are the “other” trending topic in the field of artificial intelligence. At the juncture of consumer and business, they provide the ability for an AI-based system to interact with users through a headless interface. It does not matter whether a messaging app is used, or a speech-to-text system, or even another app — the chatbot is front-end agnostic.

Since the user does not have the ability to provide context around the discussion, he just asks questions in natural language to an AI-driven backend that is tasked with figuring this context and looking for the right answer.

IBM is launching a much-awaited ‘Watson’ recruiting tool — from eremedia.com by Todd Raphael

Excerpt:

For many months IBM has gone to recruiting-industry conferences to say that the famous Watson will be at some point used for talent-acquisition, but that it hasn’t happened quite yet.

It’s here.

IBM is first using Watson for its RPO customers, and then rolling it out as a product for the larger community, perhaps next spring. One of my IBM contacts, Recruitment Innovation Global Leader Yates Baker, tells me that the current version is a work in progress like the first iPhone (or perhaps like that Siri-for-recruiting tool).

There are three parts: recruiting, marketing, and sourcing.

Apple’s Siri: A Lot Smarter, but Still Kind of Dumb — from wsj.com by Joanna Stern
With the new MacOS and Apple’s AirPods, Siri’s more powerful than ever, but still not as good as some competitors

Excerpt:

With the new iOS 10, Siri can control third-party apps, like Uber and WhatsApp. With the release of MacOS Sierra on Tuesday, Siri finally lands on the desktop, where it can take care of basic operating system tasks, send emails and more. With WatchOS 3 and the new Apple Watch, Siri is finally faster on the wrist. And with Apple’s Q-tip-looking AirPods arriving in October, Siri can whisper sweet nothings in your inner ear with unprecedented wireless freedom. Think Joaquin Phoenix’s earpiece in the movie “Her.”

The groundwork is laid for an AI assistant to stake a major claim in your life, and finally save you time by doing menial tasks. But the smarter Siri becomes in some places, the dumber it seems in others—specifically compared with Google’s and Amazon’s voice assistants. If I hear “I’m sorry, Joanna, I’m afraid I can’t answer that” one more time…

IBM Research and MIT Collaborate to Advance Frontiers of Artificial Intelligence in Real-World Audio-Visual Comprehension Technologies — from prnewswire.com
Cross-disciplinary research approach will use insights from brain and cognitive science to advance machine understanding

Excerpt:

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., Sept. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) today announced a multi-year collaboration with the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT to advance the scientific field of machine vision, a core aspect of artificial intelligence. The new IBM-MIT Laboratory for Brain-inspired Multimedia Machine Comprehension’s (BM3C) goal will be to develop cognitive computing systems that emulate the human ability to understand and integrate inputs from multiple sources of audio and visual information into a detailed computer representation of the world that can be used in a variety of computer applications in industries such as healthcare, education, and entertainment.

The BM3C will address technical challenges around both pattern recognition and prediction methods in the field of machine vision that are currently impossible for machines alone to accomplish. For instance, humans watching a short video of a real-world event can easily recognize and produce a verbal description of what happened in the clip as well as assess and predict the likelihood of a variety of subsequent events, but for a machine, this ability is currently impossible.

Satya Nadella on Microsoft’s new age of intelligence — from fastcompany.com by Harry McCracken
How the software giant aims to tie everything from Cortana to Office to HoloLens to Azure servers into one AI experience.

Excerpt:

“Microsoft was born to do a certain set of things. We’re about empowering people in organizations all over the world to achieve more. In today’s world, we want to use AI to achieve that.”

That’s Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, crisply explaining the company’s artificial-intelligence vision to me this afternoon shortly after he hosted a keynote at Microsoft’s Ignite conference for IT pros in Atlanta. But even if Microsoft only pursues AI opportunities that it considers to be core to its mission, it has a remarkably broad tapestry to work with. And the examples that were part of the keynote made that clear.

Reflections on “IBM Foundation collaborates with AFT and education leaders to use Watson to help teachers”

On 09/28/2016, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, mathematics, microlearning, mobile learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, smart/connected TV, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, vendors, youth, by Daniel Christian

IBM Foundation collaborates with AFT and education leaders to use Watson to help teachers — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Teachers will have access to a new, first-of-its-kind, free tool using IBM’s innovative Watson cognitive technology that has been trained by teachers and designed to strengthen teachers’ instruction and improve student achievement, the IBM Foundation and the American Federation of Teachers announced today.

Hundreds of elementary school teachers across the United States are piloting Teacher Advisor with Watson – an innovative tool by the IBM Foundation that provides teachers with a complete, personalized online resource. Teacher Advisor enables teachers to deepen their knowledge of key math concepts, access high-quality vetted math lessons and acclaimed teaching strategies and gives teachers the unique ability to tailor those lessons to meet their individual classroom needs.
…
Litow said there are plans to make Teacher Advisor available to all elementary school teachers across the U.S. before the end of the year.

In this first phase, Teacher Advisor offers hundreds of high-quality vetted lesson plans, instructional resources, and teaching techniques, which are customized to meet the needs of individual teachers and the particular needs of their students.

Also see:

Educators can also access high-quality videos on teaching techniques to master key skills and bring a lesson or teaching strategy to life into their classroom.

From DSC:
Today’s announcement involved personalization and giving customized directions, and it caused my mind to go in a slightly different direction. (IBM, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and others like Smart Sparrow are likely also thinking about this type of direction as well. Perhaps they’re already there…I’m not sure.)

But given the advancements in machine learning/cognitive computing (where example applications include optical character recognition (OCR) and computer vision), how much longer will it be before software is able to remotely or locally “see” what a third grader wrote down for a given math problem (via character and symbol recognition) and “see” what the student’s answer was while checking over the student’s work…if the answer was incorrect, the algorithms will likely know where the student went wrong. The software will be able to ascertain what the student did wrong and then show them how the problem should be solved (either via hints or by showing the entire problem to the student — per the teacher’s instructions/admin settings). Perhaps, via natural language processing, this process could be verbalized as well.

Further questions/thoughts/reflections then came to my mind:

Will we have bots that teachers can use to teach different subjects? (“Watson may even ask the teacher additional questions to refine its response, honing in on what the teacher needs to address certain challenges.)
Will we have bots that students can use to get the basics of a given subject/topic/equation?
Will instructional designers — and/or trainers in the corporate world — need to modify their skillsets to develop these types of bots?
Will teachers — as well as schools of education in universities and colleges — need to modify their toolboxes and their knowledgebases to take advantage of these sorts of developments?
How might the corporate world take advantage of these trends and technologies?
Will MOOCs begin to incorporate these sorts of technologies to aid in personalized learning?
What sorts of delivery mechanisms could be involved? Will we be tapping into learning-related bots from our living rooms or via our smartphones?

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

Also see:

Next Target for IBM’s Watson? Third-Grade Math — from nytimes.com by Elizabeth Harris
.
IBM Watson will help educators improve teaching skills — from zdnet.com by Natalie Gagliordi
The IBM Foundation has teamed with teachers and the American Federation of Teachers union to create an AI-based lesson plan tool called Teacher Advisor.

Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip [wired.com]

On 09/27/2016, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, Microsoft, platforms, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip — from wired.com

Excerpt:

Burger, a computer chip researcher who had joined the company four years earlier, was pitching a new idea to the execs. He called it Project Catapult.

The tech world, Burger explained, was moving into a new orbit. In the future, a few giant Internet companies would operate a few giant Internet services so complex and so different from what came before that these companies would have to build a whole new architecture to run them. They would create not just the software driving these services, but the hardware, including servers and networking gear. Project Catapult would equip all of Microsoft’s servers—millions of them—with specialized chips that the company could reprogram for particular tasks.
…
Today, the programmable chips that Burger and Lu believed would transform the world—called field programmable gate arrays—are here. FPGAs already underpin Bing, and in the coming weeks, they will drive new search algorithms based on deep neural networks—artificial intelligence modeled on the structure of the human brain—executing this AI several orders of magnitude faster than ordinary chips could. As in, 23 milliseconds instead of four seconds of nothing on your screen. FPGAs also drive Azure, the company’s cloud computing service. And in the coming years, almost every new Microsoft server will include an FPGA. That’s millions of machines across the globe. “This gives us massive capacity and enormous flexibility, and the economics work,” Burger says. “This is now Microsoft’s standard, worldwide architecture.”
…
It’s a typical tangle of tech acronyms. CPUs. GPUs. TPUs. FPGAs. But it’s the subtext that matters. With cloud computing, companies like Microsoft and Google and Amazon are driving so much of the world’s technology that those alternative chips will drive the wider universe of apps and online services. Lee says that Project Catapult will allow Microsoft to continue expanding the powers of its global supercomputer until the year 2030. After that, he says, the company can move toward quantum computing.

Announcing “LinkedIn Learning” — a new, data-driven platform for developing skills

On 09/23/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, analytics, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, data related items, digital learning, education technology, elearning, higher education, innovation, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, Microsoft, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, online learning, online media, organizational change, pace of change, passions, personalized/customized learning, platforms, reinvent, RSS, staying relevant, workplace, by Daniel Christian

LinkedIn announced several things yesterday (9/22/16). Below are some links to these announcements:

Introducing LinkedIn Learning, a Better Way to Develop Skills and Talent — from learning.linkedin.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Today, we are thrilled to announce the launch of LinkedIn Learning, an online learning platform enabling individuals and organizations to achieve their objectives and aspirations. Our goal is to help people discover and develop the skills they need through a personalized, data-driven learning experience.

LinkedIn Learning combines the industry-leading content from Lynda.com with LinkedIn’s professional data and network. With more than 450 million member profiles and billions of engagements, we have a unique view of how jobs, industries, organizations and skills evolve over time. From this, we can identify the skills you need and deliver expert-led courses to help you obtain those skills. We’re taking the guesswork out of learning.

The pressure on individuals and organizations to adapt to change has never been greater. The skills that got you to where you are today are not the skills to prepare you for tomorrow. In fact, the shelf-life of skills is less than five years, and many of today’s fastest growing job categories didn’t even exist five years ago.

To tackle these challenges, LinkedIn Learning is built on three core pillars:
…
Data-driven personalization: We get the right course in front of you at the right time. Using the intelligence that comes with our network, LinkedIn Learning creates personalized recommendations, so learners can efficiently discover which courses are most relevant to their goals or job function. Organizations can use LinkedIn insights to customize multi-course Learning Paths to meet their specific needs. We also provide robust analytics and reporting to help you measure learning effectiveness.

LinkedIn’s first big move since the $26.2 billion Microsoft acquisition is basically a ‘school’ for getting a better job — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

Today, LinkedIn has launched LinkedIn Learning — its first major product launch since the news last June that Microsoft would be snapping up the social network for $26.2 billion in a deal that has yet to close.

LinkedIn Learning takes the online skills training classes the company got in its 2015 acquisition of Lynda.com for $1.5 billion.

The idea, says LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, is to help its 433 million-plus members get the skills they need to stay relevant in a world that’s increasingly reliant on digital skills.

LinkedIn’s New Learning Platform to Recommend Lynda Courses for Professionals — from edsurge.com by Marguerite McNeal

Excerpt:

Companies will also be able to create their own “learning paths”—bundles of courses around a particular topic—to train employees. A chief learning officer, for instance, might compile a package of courses in product management and ask 10 employees to complete the assignments over the course of a few months.
…
LinkedIn is also targeting higher-education institutions with the new offering. It is marketing the solution as a professional development tool that can help faculty learn how to use classroom tools such as Moodle, Adobe Captivate and learning management systems.

“Increasingly predictions of tech displacing workers are coming to fruition,” he added. “The idea that you can study a skill once and have a job for the rest of your life—those days are over.”

LinkedIn Learning for higher education

Accelerating LinkedIn’s Vision Through Innovation — from slideshare.net

LinkedIn adding new training features, news feeds and ‘bots’ — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

LinkedIn is also adding more personalized features to its news feed, where members can see articles and announcements posted by their professional contacts. A new “Interest Feed” will offer a collection of articles, posts and opinion pieces on major news events or current issues.

If you doubt that we are on an exponential pace of change, you need to check these articles out! [Christian]

On 09/22/2016, in 21st century, Amazon, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Australia, business, Canada, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, computer science, convergence, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, disruption, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, ethics, Europe, experimentation, faith, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, Google, health, hearts -- matters of the heart, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, India, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interaction design, internet, K-12 related, leadership, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, marketplaces, Microsoft, mobile technologies, Near Field Communication (NFC), new business models, organizational change, pace of change, platforms, political science, professional development, psychology, reinvent, relationships, religion, research, robotics, society, sociology, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, the downsides of how people use tech, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, web-based collaboration, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The articles listed in this PDF document demonstrate the exponential pace of technological change that many nations across the globe are currently experiencing and will likely be experiencing for the foreseeable future. As we are no longer on a linear trajectory, we need to consider what this new trajectory means for how we:

Educate and prepare our youth in K-12
Educate and prepare our young men and women studying within higher education
Restructure/re-envision our corporate training/L&D departments
Equip our freelancers and others to find work
Help people in the workforce remain relevant/marketable/properly skilled
Encourage and better enable lifelong learning
Attempt to keep up w/ this pace of change — legally, ethically, morally, and psychologically

PDF file here

One thought that comes to mind…when we’re moving this fast, we need to be looking upwards and outwards into the horizons — constantly pulse-checking the landscapes. We can’t be looking down or be so buried in our current positions/tasks that we aren’t noticing the changes that are happening around us.

AI chatbot apps to infiltrate businesses sooner than you think — from searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com by Bridget Botelho
Artificial intelligence chatbots aren’t the norm yet, but within the next five years, there’s a good chance the sales person emailing you won’t be a person at all.

Excerpt:

In fact, artificial intelligence has come so far so fast in recent years, Gartner predicts it will be pervasive in all new products by 2020, with technologies including natural language capabilities, deep neural networks and conversational capabilities.

Other analysts share that expectation. Technologies that encompass the umbrella term artificial intelligence — including image recognition, machine learning, AI chatbots and speech recognition — will soon be ubiquitous in business applications as developers gain access to it through platforms such as the IBM Watson Conversation API and the Google Cloud Natural Language API.

3 corporate departments that chatbots will disrupt — from venturebeat.com by Natalie Lambert

Excerpt:

Customer Service
Human Resources
Marketing

Facebook Messenger’s 11,000 chatbots are much more interactive — from androidcentral.com by Harish Jonnalagadda

Excerpt:

Facebook introduced chatbots on Messenger three months ago, and the search giant has shared today that over 11,000 bots are active on the messaging service. The Messenger Platform has picked up an update that adds a slew of new features to bots, such as a persistent menu that lists a bot’s commands, quick replies, ability to respond with GIFs, audio, video, and other files, and a rating system to provide feedback to bot developers.

Chatbots are coming to take over the world — from telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Excerpts:

In another example, many businesses use interactive voice response (IVR) telephony systems, which have limited functionalities and often provide a poor user experience. Chatbots can replace these applications in future where the user will interact naturally to get relevant information without following certain steps or waiting for a logical sequence to occur.
…
Chatbots are a good starting point, but the future lies in more advanced versions of audio and video bots. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google with its voice assistance, are working in the same direction to achieve it. Bot ecosystems will become even more relevant in the phase of IoT mass adoption and improvement of input/output (I/O) technology.

With big players investing heavily in AI, Chatbots are likely to be an increasing feature of social media and other communications platforms.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Chatbots But Were Afraid to Ask — from businessinsider.com by Andrew Meola

Excerpt:

Chatbots are software programs that use messaging platforms as the interface to perform a wide variety of tasks—everything from scheduling a meeting to reporting the weather, to helping a customer buy a sweater.

Because texting is the heart of the mobile experience for smartphone users, chatbots are a natural way to turn something users are very familiar with into a rewarding service or marketing opportunity.

And when you consider that the top 4 messaging apps reach over 3 billion global users (MORE than the top 4 social networks), you can see that the opportunity is huge.

Microsoft taught a computer to make ‘chit chat’ — and now 40 million people love it — from businessinsider.com by Matt Weinberger

Excerpt:

The Xiaoice chat bot — pronounced “Shao-ice” and translated as “little Bing” — born as an experiment by Microsoft Research in 2014, reaches 40 million followers in China, who often literally talk with her for hours.

At her most active, Xiaoice is holding down as many 23 conversations a session, says Microsoft Research NExT leader Dr. Peter Lee. It’s even evolved to become a nice little sideline business for Microsoft, thanks to a partnership with Chinese e-retailer JD.com that lets users buy products by talking to Xiaoice.

The reason Xiaoice is so successful is she was born of a different kind of philosophical experiment: Instead of building a chat bot that was useful, Microsoft simply tried to make it fun to talk to.

The next battleground: The 4th Era of Personal Computing — from stevebrownfuturist.com by Steve Brown

Excerpt:

I believe we are moving into the fourth era of personal computing. The first era was characterized by the emergence of the PC. The second by the web and the browser, and the third by mobile and apps.

The fourth personal computing platform will be a combination of IOT, wearable and AR-based clients using speech and gesture, connected over 4G/5G networks to PA, CaaS and social networking platforms that draw upon a new class of cloud-based AI to deliver highly personalized access to information and services.

So what does the fourth era of personal computing look like? It’s a world of smart objects, smart spaces, voice control, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.

The new Google Arts & Culture, on exhibit now’ — from googleblog.blogspot.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Just as the world’s precious artworks and monuments need a touch-up to look their best, the home we’ve built to host the world’s cultural treasures online needs a lick of paint every now and then. We’re ready to pull off the dust sheets and introduce the new Google Arts & Culture website and app, by the Google Cultural Institute. The app lets you explore anything from cats in art since 200 BCE to the color red in Abstract Expressionism, and everything in between. Our new tools will help you discover works and artifacts, allowing you to immerse yourself in cultural experiences across art, history and wonders of the world—from more than a thousand museums across 70 countries…

Also see:

Google’s new app isn’t the next best thing to the Louvre. It might be better
Google Arts & Culture turns art from all over the world into a meta museum.

Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality are the 4th Wave of Digital Technology [Merel]

On 07/19/2016, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Augmented Reality (AR), business, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, corporate / business world, human-computer interaction (HCI), Mixed Reality (MR), platforms, programming, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality are the 4th Wave of Digital Technology — from uploadvr.com by Tim Merel

Excerpt:

Consumer computing platform changes aren’t straight lines, they’re waves. PC, internet and mobile were the first 3 waves, and each was faster, larger and more disruptive than the last. Now the fourth wave of virtual, augmented and mixed reality is bearing down on us, so let’s dive in. The water’s fine.

From DSC:
As you might suppose, waves are best experienced when riding on top of one — versus getting crushed by one or having to try to swim after a wave once it’s passed you by. Though much of this wave is forthcoming, the point in posting this now is to encourage us to put these Human Computer Interaction (HCI)-related changes on our radars…or, to go with the former analogy, to encourage us to grab our surfboards!

Also relevant/see:

What are the differences among virtual, augmented and mixed reality? — from recode.net by Eric Johnson

From DSC:
I would like to highlight a few items from this month’s Campus Technology magazine:

2016 Campus Technology Innovators Awards
We honor 11 institutions using technology in innovative ways to improve teaching, learning, administration and operations in higher education.

Editorial: CT Innovators Honorable Mentions
Gleaned from this year’s Campus Technology Innovators award nominations, these 8 projects are making strides in virtual reality, synchronous online learning, digital literacy and more.

How blockchain will disrupt the higher education transcript
Blockchain technology could offer a more learner-centered alternative to traditional credentialing.

AI chatbot apps to infiltrate businesses sooner than you think — from searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com by Bridget Botelho
Artificial intelligence chatbots aren’t the norm yet, but within the next five years, there’s a good chance the sales person emailing you won’t be a person at all.

Excerpt:

In fact, artificial intelligence has come so far so fast in recent years, Gartner predicts it will be pervasive in all new products by 2020, with technologies including natural language capabilities, deep neural networks and conversational capabilities.

Other analysts share that expectation. Technologies that encompass the umbrella term artificial intelligence — including image recognition, machine learning, AI chatbots and speech recognition — will soon be ubiquitous in business applications as developers gain access to it through platforms such as the IBM Watson Conversation API and the Google Cloud Natural Language API.

3 corporate departments that chatbots will disrupt — from venturebeat.com by Natalie Lambert

Excerpt:

Customer Service
Human Resources
Marketing

Facebook Messenger’s 11,000 chatbots are much more interactive — from androidcentral.com by Harish Jonnalagadda

Excerpt:

Facebook introduced chatbots on Messenger three months ago, and the search giant has shared today that over 11,000 bots are active on the messaging service. The Messenger Platform has picked up an update that adds a slew of new features to bots, such as a persistent menu that lists a bot’s commands, quick replies, ability to respond with GIFs, audio, video, and other files, and a rating system to provide feedback to bot developers.

Chatbots are coming to take over the world — from telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Excerpts:

In another example, many businesses use interactive voice response (IVR) telephony systems, which have limited functionalities and often provide a poor user experience. Chatbots can replace these applications in future where the user will interact naturally to get relevant information without following certain steps or waiting for a logical sequence to occur.
…
Chatbots are a good starting point, but the future lies in more advanced versions of audio and video bots. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google with its voice assistance, are working in the same direction to achieve it. Bot ecosystems will become even more relevant in the phase of IoT mass adoption and improvement of input/output (I/O) technology.

With big players investing heavily in AI, Chatbots are likely to be an increasing feature of social media and other communications platforms.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Chatbots But Were Afraid to Ask — from businessinsider.com by Andrew Meola

Excerpt:

Chatbots are software programs that use messaging platforms as the interface to perform a wide variety of tasks—everything from scheduling a meeting to reporting the weather, to helping a customer buy a sweater.

Because texting is the heart of the mobile experience for smartphone users, chatbots are a natural way to turn something users are very familiar with into a rewarding service or marketing opportunity.

And when you consider that the top 4 messaging apps reach over 3 billion global users (MORE than the top 4 social networks), you can see that the opportunity is huge.

Paper 53 is the ‘sketch-iPad’ you always wanted — from edtech4beginners.com

Excerpt:

Paper 53 is a brilliant app which combines drawings, notes, photos and sketches. It is available on the Appstore. The app is simple and user-friendly; just use your finger (or a stylus) to draw, paint, select colours, erase and lots more.

Google’s virtual reality field trips are available to everyone — from engadget.com by Jon Fingas
Students can also use Google Cast to share their screens across the classroom.

10 very good new educational web tools — from educatorstechnology.com

Excerpt:

Below is a collection of some new educational web tools and mobile apps to try out in your instruction. The purpose is to keep you updated about the new releases in the EdTech world and empower you with the necessary technology to take your teaching and learning to the next level. Some of the things you can do with these applications include: Learn English pronunciation from native speakers, easily save web content to Google, search YouTube without having to stop the video playing, learn basic math skills through challenging games and activities, unshare sent files in Gmail, create interactive and engaging videos by adding polls, short questions and quizzes, create beautiful presentations and animations using drawn images and stick figures and many more.

Teaching with digital timelines — from Derek Bruff

Excerpt:

This year the Center for Teaching hosted a few educational technology working groups for faculty, staff, and students interested in exploring ways particular technologies might meet their instructional goals. One of the groups investigated the use of digital timeline tools, like Tiki-Toki and TimelineJS, that facilitate the creation of online, multimedia, interactive, and collaborative timelines. I had used such tools in my own teaching, having asked my 2010 writing seminar students to create a class timeline on the history of cryptography, and I was eager to talk with other instructors about the potential of student-produced timelines.

Top 5 AI virtual assistants: Now and into the future — from interestingengineering.com

Excerpt:

In Silicon Valley and elsewhere there’s currently an AI arms race going on. The first wave of this race is centered around artificial virtual assistants that are poised to become our new digital best friends in the very near future. While many people are familiar with Apple’s popular AI virtual assistant, Siri, there are four other main players in the AI virtual assistant space.

From DSC:
Twitter is also a tool that you should consider putting in your toolbox — or in your students’ toolboxes. Consider how it was used here –> This Henry VIII Twitter Account Is The Best Way To Learn About Brexit | @KngHnryVIII tells it like it is (and like how it was in the 1500s).

Heuristic Media is working on 37 apps, 1 for each Shakespeare play — with The Tempest as its pilot app.

Addendum on 6/30/16:

A Good Infographic Featuring 30 Web Tools for Teacher Librarians — from educatorstechnology.com
.
7 Apps for Student Creators — from edutopia.org by Monica Burns
.
Introducing the new mobile app for Microsoft Flow — from flow.microsoft.com with thanks to Mr. Michael Haan, Technology Integration Specialist/Purchasing w/ Calvin Information Technology, for this resource

Blackboard announces partnerships with IBM & Amazon | IBM Watson to come into play

On 06/28/2016, in Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, digital learning, education technology, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, innovation, K-12 related, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Blackboard Partners with IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) – North America Customer Announcement

Date Published: Jun 27,2016
Product: Collaborate, ANGEL, Learn, CE/Vista, Xythos, Moodlerooms, Analytics, Open Content
Article No.: 000042385

Announcement Details:
We are excited to share some news with you about Blackboard’s new partnership with IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) which will have far-reaching and lasting impacts for the education technology industry. This communication will provide details on how this will benefit our customers and other business partners.

This partnership will enable us to accelerate our focus on developing innovative educational products and services that serve the needs of our customers. And it will open the door for us to develop novel solutions benefiting the education ecosystem. There are two parts to this partnership that will benefit you:

Selection of AWS as our strategic cloud platform and partnership with IBM for operations and infrastructure management

We will partner with IBM in the operations and infrastructure management of Blackboard’s data centers. We have also selected AWS as our cloud services provider and entered into an agreement with IBM to manage our cloud services environments. This partnership will enable Blackboard to focus on what we do best – developing innovative educational products and services – while relying on the world-class data hosting and operational capabilities of IBM and AWS.

This partnership does not affect our Transact customers.

This partnership offers customers many benefits. It will enable us to accelerate our focus on developing innovative educational products and services that serve the needs of our customers. Furthermore, we will leverage IBM’s experience, scale, and tools with the goal of delivering the highest quality of service possible to our customers. This includes stringent service level agreements intended to ensure that Blackboard customers receive the most reliable and resilient hosting services available in the marketplace. In addition, this partnership allows for enhanced technical, organizational and physical security measures to safeguard Blackboard customer data. We will also leverage the power of the AWS ecosystem to accelerate product development and deployment; further improving customer experience in the future.

Our relationship with Amazon and IBM is integrated. There are no gaps in accountability for delivering reliable services to our clients. And its backed by a comprehensive and robust set of service level commitments to deliver highly available and responsive services for you.

Exclusive partnership to co-develop cognitive education solutions utilizing Watson

Blackboard and IBM have entered into an exclusive agreement to develop cognitive educational solutions for the K-12 and higher education markets. The partnership will combine Blackboard’s expertise in developing innovative education products in use by millions around the world, with the power of IBM Watson’s cognitive computing technology to create exclusive solutions to address some of the most pressing problems in education.

IBM Watson is a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data. In short, it can help to ‘hyper personalize’ the educational experience.

To sum it up, we’re tremendously excited about partnering with IBM and Amazon to deliver extraordinary capability to our customers. And we’re excited by what’s on the horizon for Blackboard and our customers as we continue to focus on delivering innovative products that address some of the most pressing challenges in education.

To learn more about our partnership, check out our press release on Blackboard.com. We’ll also provide further details in the weeks ahead through webinars and at BbWorld.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Why did Blackboard select IBM and AWS as their partners?
We spent considerable time selecting our partners, and we’re confident in what both IBM and Amazon will deliver for our customers. IBM is one of the world’s top infrastructure management organizations, and is uniquely positioned because of its experience and work in the education space. AWS is the clear leader in cloud services, with the largest global cloud infrastructure footprint, the most well-developed ecosystem, tremendous momentum and rate of innovation.Both companies share our values and dedication to maintaining the privacy of customer data, and both have invested heavily in world-class security programs to keep your data safe in accordance with global standards and regulations.

2. Will the partnership extend to infrastructure provision and management for Blackboard’s Transact customers?
No. Transact will continue to operate as today with no changes.

3. How can I learn more about this partnership between Blackboard and IBM and the benefits to me?
In order to provide you with an opportunity to ask questions and learn more about this partnership and how it will benefit you, we have planned for several sessions at BbWorld, and have scheduled a series of customer webinars. BbWorld is scheduled for July 12-14 and the webinars will be scheduled in July and August.

4. Will this change in responsibility affect who I call if I have a question or issue?
No. Your support will continue to be handled by the same Blackboard team that exists today.

5. Will I see any changes as a result of the partnership? Yes. We expect that you will see operational improvements starting in the 3-6 month timeframe. These include improved system availability and accelerated response time to issues.

6. What does this mean for Security and Privacy?
IBM and AWS share our focus on providing highly secure environments and experiences. This partnership will provide an enhanced data security program and robust technical, organizational and physical security measures to protect customer data, including student data. Further, our agreement with IBM and AWS contains detailed provisions intended to safeguard data in North American markets in specific consideration of applicable privacy laws and regulations. These provisions include geographic restrictions on the location and transfer of customer data, and encryption standards, to comply with applicable law.

7. Does this partnership mean that I will need to move out of my existing Learn hosted environment?
No. While in time many customers are planning to transition their Learn deployment to our cloud environment, customers who are currently running Learn 9.1 in our managed hosting datacenters will not be required to move.

8. What about other Blackboard applications besides Learn?
Many other Blackboard applications are already delivered in a software-as-a-service model using Blackboard-managed datacenters. Over the coming years, IBM and Blackboard will work together to move these applications from Blackboard datacenters to AWS. Any migration plan will be developed in full consideration of giving customers an uninterrupted service and user experience.

9. What about the current SaaS deployment for Blackboard Learn?
There is no impact. Learn SaaS already runs on AWS.

10. What is IBM Watson?
IBM Watson is a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data. In short, it can help to ‘hyper personalize’ the educational experience.

Watson gained a level of fame in 2011 when the team put their technology up against two of Jeopardy’s greatest champions in the history of the game. It was an exciting two-day match that resulted in Watson beating out the competition – not just from right answers, but also from using the right strategy for wagers to win the game.

See how Watson beat the Jeopardy leaders in this short video.

How does Watson work? Watch this educational video.

11. Are there any definitive plans for the cognitive education solutions developed with Watson that I need to plan for at my institution?
We are in the early stages of this relationship. Blackboard and the Watson Education team are starting the process of scoping out the solutions that will bring the most value to K-12 and higher education. We plan to communicate our progress and solicit your input as we move forward.

12. What if I have more questions about this partnership?
There are three ways you can get answers to your questions:

Attend one of the multiple sessions planned for BbWorld.
Attend one of the online webinars will be schedule in the coming weeks.
Contact your Account Executive or Customer Success Advocate.

Addendum on 6/29/16:

Blackboard Inc. and IBM Enter Strategic Relationship to Develop Cognitive Solutions and Manage Infrastructure Operations
Excerpt:
IBM and Blackboard will work collaboratively to develop cognitive educational solutions utilizing the capabilities of both companies to advance learner success. The companies will combine Blackboard’s expertise in developing innovative education products used by millions of people around the world with the power of IBM Watson’s cognitive computing technology. The new solutions will offer greater support for teachers and students to address their collaborative needs in the classroom and help students complete and achieve their educational goals.

Learning Ecosystems

Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality are the 4th Wave of Digital Technology [Merel]

Highlighting a few items from this month’s Campus Technology Magazine

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